


Suspicious Mind

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Scream (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 07:37:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7968115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eli's POV of growing up with Kieran and gradually becoming suspicious of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Suspicious Mind

They’d never really gotten along, but their families had thought nothing of it. They’d grown up together, practically in each other’s pockets, they were bound to fight. But Kieran had always been the one who was that bit more popular, that bit better at sport, the one who got better grades. So he was the one who was usually believed.

Eli didn’t much care. He was happy with the friends he had and the grades he got. But every time Kieran started saying something stupid about how Eli only tried hard in the classes he shared with Kieran, or only ever expressed an interest in girls if Kieran had seen them first, again he was believed, and Eli reached the point where he just stopped pleading his innocence. If people were going to believe that Eli wanted everything Kieran had, whatever Eli said, then what was the point?

He’d thought it would be different with Mel, who was in a bunch of his classes, and had started talking to Eli a lot, wanting to hang out with him away from their friends. When Kieran had found out, he’d gone crazy. He’d taken to following Mel home from school, positioning himself where he could watch her, always trying to latch on to them and insert himself into their conversations. Mel didn’t think anything of it. She just thought it was great that Kieran was trying to get to know her, to make her feel welcome in Eli’s life. Eli hoped that one day, when they’d been dating a while longer, he’d be able to show Mel what Kieran was really like. 

Then one day he’d come home to find a cop car parked outside his house. The cops had shown him some printouts, supposedly from Eli’s Facebook, featuring pictures of Mel sleeping naked. Eli hadn’t taken them. He’d never seen them before. But since they were displayed on Eli’s social networking, and some “friend” had given a statement about Eli’s little habit of what he called Goldilocksing, he wasn’t believed. Mel wouldn’t listen to his explanation, dumped him immediately, and requested that a restraining order be taken out against Eli.

Then Kieran appeared in front of him, shaking his head. “Eli, you perv.” He said. “I know we’re family, But I couldn’t let that go on with Mel not knowing what you were doing. I had to warn her.” And then Eli knew it must have been Kieran who had taken the photos, Kieran who had certainly had the opportunity to get onto Eli’s Facebook and post them, Kieran who had gone to Mel and shown her under the guise of a concerned friend, and most likely Kieran who had given the statement about the Goldilocksing. But with the restraining order in place, he had no way of getting that through to Mel, and no one else believed him.

A few weeks later, Eli came home to find his mother waiting for him, to tell him she had some bad news for him. Aunt Ali, Uncle Clark’s ex-wife and Kieran’s mother, and her husband Nick had been killed in a car accident. Kieran had also been in the car, but had survived. “He wants to go to Lakewood, to live with your Uncle Clark,” Tina had said, and Eli’s first reaction was relief that he wasn’t moving in with them, wouldn’t be trying to take Eli’s place in his own home as well. Then when he’d had a bit more time to think about it, he realised just how odd that decision was. Kieran hardly ever talked about Uncle Clark, and when he did, it was usually to call him “that shithead”. He was the only person Kieran spoke about more negatively…than Nick.

Eli had always known that Kieran hated his stepfather, although he’d never really understood it. From what he knew of him, he always thought Nick was a pretty decent guy. Maybe he was one of the only ones who actually saw through Kieran? Eli had never been sure and never dared ask. Not that long ago, Kieran had come storming into school vowing that one day, he would kill his stepfather, after some argument about something so stupid Eli couldn’t even remember it and had forgotten all about it until now. But now he wondered…No, Kieran couldn’t have done it. The story was, they were having one of their usual arguments, and the distraction had caused Nick to crash the car. It couldn’t be possible. Kieran couldn’t have known that by picking a fight in that exact moment, that would result. No, he’d put it out of his mind, be grateful that he was getting rid of Kieran.

And for a few weeks, that was easy enough. Until the day he turned on the television and happened to catch a news item where Uncle Clark was being interviewed about some murders in Lakewood. As Eli watched, he heard about how someone named Nina Patterson had been found murdered in her own swimming pool, her boyfriend Tyler O’Neill had had his head severed, the suicide by hanging of someone named Rachel Murray was no longer considered suicide and had now been linked to these murders, and most recently someone named Will Belmont had been decapitated.

Kieran, Eli thought, then instantly wondered why he had done so. It was true that the murder spree Uncle Clark was describing appeared to have started around the time that Kieran moved to Lakewood, but Eli couldn’t be certain that that meant anything. He’d hardly had time to get to know any of these people, for a start. Yet the doubt still remained in his mind about the accident Kieran’s mother and stepfather had been in, long after it had officially been ruled an accident...maybe he should go and visit there, see if he could pick up anything about what had been happening. 

 

As Eli sneaked into Will Belmont’s memorial service, he wondered if he was crazy. For one thing, although he’d barely seen Uncle Clark since he was a little kid, Uncle Clark could have seen photos of him and recognise him, so he had to keep out of the way. Plus, once he was there, he wasn’t even sure what he was going to say to Kieran. “Hey, Kieran, are you the person who’s been killing all these people?” Kieran would just bluff his way out of that one and Eli would just look like the crazy person again. At least he hadn’t had to worry about bumping into Kieran at the memorial, since Kieran hadn’t been there. There had been one awkward moment when Will’s best friend Jake Fitzgerald had come over, introduced himself and asked how Eli knew Will. Eli had caught himself before letting slip the surname Hudson and then had given him some story about how he’d gone to the same summer camp as Will when they were kids. Jake had seemed to buy it and had thankfully seen someone else he wanted to talk to, saving Eli from having to make up some hilarious anecdotes about embarrassing things Will had done at this camp. Later on, Eli had overheard a conversation between Jake and someone called Brooke about how the late Will had been involved in some kind of love triangle with Kieran and some girl named Emma, Will and Kieran had never exactly been friends and that was why Kieran wasn’t there. Which, sure, if that were true, could potentially have been a motive for Kieran to have gone after this Will, but he could have hardly known any of the others, if at all – Riley, Nina and Tyler had been killed so soon after Kieran arrived in Lakewood, ditto for Rachel who hadn’t even attended the same school. Was Kieran really so crazy that he’d kill people he didn’t even know?

Maybe Eli was the crazy one for even thinking it. Beyond this love triangle he’d heard about, he hadn’t picked up on anything that even suggested Kieran might be responsible. Maybe he was letting his own hatred of the guy cloud his judgement. It was just as well that he hadn’t seen Kieran and confronted him while he was in Lakewood after all. Better to get out of there, shut the door on Kieran as he’d planned to, and leave it at that. And when the news broke shortly afterwards that the Lakewood killer was Piper Shaw, that woman who did the shit podcasts, (that new guy who took over, Noah Foster, was so much better, at least he took the time to get his facts straight), who turned out to be the daughter of Brandon James, for a few minutes Eli wondered whether he could have been completely wrong about Kieran after all.

Then the cops came to their door, told Eli and Tina that the final victim, as yet unnamed in the media until next of kin had been notified, was Uncle Clark. And in that moment, all the comments Eli had ever heard Kieran make about hating his father raced through his mind once more, and he wondered again. Piper Shaw may have been publicly named as the killer, but Eli wasn’t convinced Kieran was innocent, and all he had to do was prove it.

 

Tina was pissed when Miguel Acosta approached her to express his concerns after finding out how much time Kieran was spending alone in the Hudson property since his father’s death and saying that Kieran should be living with her full time, whether that be in Lakewood or Atlanta. But she would have been even more pissed had she known that it had been Eli who had anonymously contacted Miguel, in an attempt to force the issue, allowing Eli the opportunity to persuade Tina to stick around in Lakewood. And it worked just like he had intended; he knew just what buttons to push with Tina to make her realise that staying in Lakewood was the better option. It was clear that Kieran didn’t like it; his reaction when Eli started at their school and Emma went out of her way to help him settle in made Eli even more sure that he was right. But as convincing as Kieran was, as much as he was convincing his friends that Eli was the one they should be suspicious of, Eli knew he had to do what it took to expose the real Kieran. So he planted the idea in Emma’s mind about having a surprise party for Kieran, thinking that an event like that might draw Kieran out, might prompt him to try and do something where Eli could catch him in the act (and would have done, too, had it not been for that spiked tequila), while trying to get to know Emma, become close enough to her to gain her trust, and maybe convince her that Kieran wasn’t to be trusted. He’d do whatever he had to do to expose his cousin, for Uncle Clark, for Mel back in Atlanta, for all the victims of his and Piper Shaw’s killing spree…and for Emma Duval.


End file.
